
HALL | It will come back into the story, because we’re trying to address the global issue of nationalism, and I think that it’s going to be an issue for her in the campaign because it’s an issue in the world. How much of a threat might they be as we move forward? How much they’re on Elizabeth’s mind as she leaves the State Department? TVLINE | The terrorist group Knights of Western Freedom don’t seem like they are going to go away, either. Again, with the three-party system, who knows what can happen? We’re not closing the door on anything. As we take on this approach to a campaign year, I want to feel like we can go wherever we need to go. MCCREARY | We haven’t dismissed it as a possibility. We see in the finale that he’s suspending his campaign, but is there a possibility he will un-suspend next season? TVLINE | Talk to me a little bit about Sen. But one of the things I love about what we can do in the show is help unpack those issues for people, like we did last season with NATO, and look at some more domestic issues in a way that helps people really understand why there are “sides.” The reason they’re polarizing is they’re not easy-to-answer problems. Some real discourse that helps people understand all sides of the issue, which is hard to find these days. MCCREARY | I think it’s possible to actually have discourse on real-life polarizing issues. So we just wanted to show a three-party election system, and in order to do that, we decided we had to identify the parties. The only thing that we ruled out of our world is extremism.

We wanted to come at our election from the point of view of you’re going to get to hear everybody’s policy differences and different platforms as elections work in a thriving democracy. I’ve always said the mission statement for the show is a place people can go to talk about politics that isn’t so polarizing. What we really wanted to do, since Elizabeth is an independent and that’s the party she’s running on, is that we wanted to name all the parties. HALL | We thought that if we were going to do an election year, we couldn’t really avoid addressing the party system. TVLINE | In the penultimate episode this season, the show addressed political party affiliation in a way that hasn’t been done before: After seasons of not putting a fine point on with which party the Dalton administration and Elizabeth identified, we now know she is not Republican. What made now the time that you felt that it was time to start addressing these party lines? Do we have a strict definition of what party Elizabeth is with?

We’ve always been about pulling back the curtain on the State Department and showing the process of diplomacy, so this is going to be pulling back the curtain on a campaign and everything that that involves.

We’d love to do a primary and an election next season. HALL | What we’d love to do is get her on the campaign trail. What comes next? Are we going to be focused mainly on her campaign? Will we be in the State Department at all? TVLINE | We’ve reached kind of critical mass with where Elizabeth has been headed for the past few years. McCreary and executive producer Barbara Hall let us in on what some of those developments might be and broke down the finale’s major beats (is Owen Callister’s run really over?), ramifications for the future (did you pay attention to that political party talk last week?) and biggest overall surprise (Stevie kissed whom?!). The Equalizer's Queen Latifah Weighs In on Chris Noth's Exit Amid Assault Allegations: 'Justice Has to Prevail' Jorja Fox Won't Return for CSI: Vegas Season 2, Explains: 'I Just Can't Split Sara and Grissom Up Again'
